The Readability and Simplicity of Donald Trump’s Language Orly Kayam ** Preview (first 5 pages only) ** for the full article: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1478929917706844 Orly Kayam. Published on Political Studies Review (OnlineFirst), 1-16 © The Author(s), 2017 Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. DOI: 10.1177/1478929917706844 Abstract The purpose of the current study is to identify the readability and simplicity of Donald J. Trump’s speech in his media interviews and debates during the 2016 U.S. presidential primary campaign. Ten interviews and debates broadcast on different television networks were analyzed using three of the most commonly used readability formulas: Flesch-Kincaid, SMOG and Gunning-Fog. The analysis revealed that a fourth- to fifth-grade level of education (9-11 year-olds) is required to understand Trump’s language. Ten additional interviews and debates of other candidates in the presidential election of 2016, from both the Republican and the Democratic parties, were analyzed, using the same readability formulas, in order to shed additional light on Trump’s results. This analysis showed that the average score of all the other candidates was at a ninth-grade level (14-15 year-olds). Furthermore, the study reveals that Trump’s sentences and words were significantly shorter and less complex than those of any other candidate. This study suggests that Trump uses low readability and simplicity of language as a rhetorical strategy to gain popularity, in accordance with the trend of anti-intellectualism. Keywords politics, rhetoric, language, Donald Trump, readability, anti-intellectualism The Readability and Simplicity of Donald Trump’s Language 1. Introduction On June 16, 2015 Donald J. Trump, who until then was “only” a successful businessman and television celebrity, announced his candidacy for president of the United States. Less than a month later and despite the lack of support of many key Republicans (Gibbons-Neff, 2016), including former presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain (Burns & Barbaro, 2016), and alongside countless articles and unfavorable coverage in the press and media (e.g. Kristof, 2016; Feldenkirchen, Medick, & Stark, 2016; Abramson, 2016), Trump has managed to trounce his fellow candidates, and after they dropped out of the primaries he remained the only presidential candidate of the Republican Party. In November 2016, against the polls, projections and estimations, Trump was elected President of the United States. In less than a year and a half and with no previous political experience, he did what many considered “the impossible” - he turned from an amusing anecdote and the most discussed and controversial phenomenon in modern politics, into the leader of the most powerful country in the world. In many ways Trump represents an exceptional pattern that differentiates him from the typical American politician. According to Street (2004), the rise of the celebrity politician has seen the displacement of traditional political skills (e.g. bargaining, compromise) and their replacement by those of media management and fundraising. “Politicians become stars, politics becomes a series of spectacles, and the citizens become spectators” (Street, 2004, p. 441). While the media has frequently covered Trump’s language and style (e.g. Denby, 2015; Ross, 2015), there has not been sufficient academic research analyzing Trump’s rhetoric (see, 1 however, Jones, 2016). Research on the language and rhetoric of present and former U.S. presidents has been conducted, for example, by Degani (2015) and Kayam (2013) on President Barack Obama, and in Lim’s book The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush (2008). Lim’s corpus includes an analysis of the reading ease of all the American presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush, and shows a trend towards language simplicity and anti-intellectualism since 1789. According to Lim (2008), while most eighteenth and nineteenth century presidents spoke at a university/college graduate level, throughout the twentieth century the average readability level of presidential speech declined to an eighth-grade level (13-14 year-olds), and the average sentence length dropped from an average of 50 words per sentence in the 1780s to less than 20 in the 1980s. In October 2015, the Boston Globe analyzed the candidacy announcement speeches of candidates from both Republican and Democratic parties using the Flesch-Kincaid formula, and concluded that Trump’s speech scored the lowest grade level among all the other candidates (4.1 grade level; 9-10 year-olds), while candidates Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders scored significantly higher (8.9 and 10.1, respectively; 14-15 year-olds and 15-16 year-olds). According to DuBay (2004), the National Adult Literacy Study (Doak et al., 1996; Weiss & Coyne, 1997) stated that the average adult in the U.S. reads at the seventh-grade level (12-13 year-olds). Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that using language that is understood at lower grade levels will appeal to wider audiences. Eric Ostermeier, who has tested various candidates since 2009, comments “I haven’t seen a fourth-grade one before”, and adds “but if he was speaking more like politicians, would he be doing as well in the polls? I don’t think so” (in Viser, 2015, para. 23). The fact that Trump speaks at a readability level that is lower than the level of the average adult in the U.S. means that he is understood by almost every American voter. In this way Trump appeals to wider audiences. However, the fact that he speaks in simple colloquial language does not 2 mean that this is what necessarily brought Trump more supporters.1 In other words, we do not argue that people with low readability levels are more likely to support a candidate that speaks at a similar level, or that people with high readability levels are likely to reject candidates with lower readability levels. This may reveal a certain tendency, but it needs to be explored by systematic research. Exit polls that were released after the 2016 U.S elections, clearly show this tendency. In fact, one of the widest gaps in the 2016 elections emerged between voters with and without a college degree. According to the exit poll conducted by Edison Research for the National Election Pool, and reported on CNN on election day - November 9th, 20162, college graduates supported Clinton by a 9-point margin (52%-43%), while those without a college degree backed Trump 52%-44%. As to white voters without a college degree, 67% supported Trump, while only 28% backed Clinton. Even among women, 62% of white non-college educated supported Trump, while only 34% supported Hillary. As Cody Cain wrote in Salon.com just a week before the election, “Trump ‘dumbs down’ his messages in order to appeal to low-information voters, or, as Trump calls them, the ‘poorly educated’” (para. 3). Cain names Trump’s statements as “shockingly simplistic” (para. 9) that “sound wonderful to a fourth-grader” (Cain, 2016). In other words, it is possible that voters with low readability levels support Trump because he speaks at their level, but it is not necessarily so. However, what is relevant to the current research is that Trump’s low readability level and his use of simple language are in accordance with the trend of anti-intellectualism. People may support this trend regardless of their readability levels or years of education. Not only is it a rejection of intellect and those who are supposed to represent and possess knowledge, but more specifically in politics, it is a rejection of the conventional 2 3 For the complete results of the CNN Exit Polls see: http://edition.cnn.com/election/results/exitpolls/national/president. politician and the search for something different ̶ a politician that says what he or she really thinks, without conforming to the rules of political correctness. According to Colvin (2016), “Trump is completely unlike all other candidates, as he is far more relevant because he's real - he talks naturally, not like a politician, and he says out loud what a segment of voters is thinking” (Colvin, 2016, para. 2). Swaim (2015) adds: “to get at what makes Trump’s language different, take a look at the shape of his sentences. They don't work the way modern political rhetoric does - they work the way punchlines work: short (sometimes very short) with the most important words at the end” (Swaim, 2015, para. 5). Furthermore, Swaim (2015) claims that “for people who’ve grown weary of politicians using vague and convoluted language to lull or impress their listeners, to preserve their options and to avoid criticism, Trump sounds refreshingly clear and forthright” (Swaim, 2015, para. 13). Simplicity and brevity are the first two rules of Frank Luntz’s “Ten Rules of Effective Language”: use small words and use short sentences (Luntz, 2007). According to Luntz, who worked for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani from 1993 through 2001, and witnessed the collapse of his 2008 presidential campaign, a candidate should avoid words that might force someone to reach for the dictionary. Luntz suggests that “the most memorable political language is rarely longer than a sentence” (Lunz, 2007, p. 7). The simplicity and readability of Trump’s language will be the focus of the current study, which is the first of two complementary studies (the second article addresses Trump’s anti-political rhetoric). The purpose of this study is to analyze, from a linguistic perspective, Trump’s phenomenal success in becoming the nominee of the Republican Party and the President-elect in less than a year and a half. The study focuses on Trump’s language readability and other aspects of linguistic simplicity, such as the use of complex (polysyllabic) words and sentence length, and compares these findings with those of other candidates from both parties. 4 Although the study does not take the political context into account, its findings and consequences can make a significant contribution to the analysis of the rhetoric of presidential campaigns and the research of political anti-intellectualism. As I will show, Trump’s rhetorical strategy of using simple language with a low readability level helped pave the way to his becoming the Republican Party nominee for President in the 2016 election, by appealing to larger audiences and conforming to the trend of anti-intellectualism. In other words, the current study seeks to explore the rhetorical grounds that helped Trump market himself and address a wider American audience. In the following two subsections I will elaborate on the trend of anti-intellectualism and the history of readability test formulas. 1.1 Anti-Intellectualism In its political sense, anti-intellectualism is an approach that minimizes the value of knowledge, intelligence, science, academia and intellectuals. In 1980 Isaac Asimov wrote in his essay “A Cult of Ignorance”, published in Newsweek, that “anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’” (Asimov, 1980, p. 19). Hofstadter (1963) defines anti-intellectualism as a “resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition constantly to minimize the value of that life” (Hofstadter, 1963, p. 19). Lim (2008) adds that anti-intellectualism consists of “disapprobation attitudes toward elitism, sophistry, effeminacy, and artifice and approbative attitudes toward sincerity, modesty, accessibility, and democracy, making it a potent political stance and weapon” (Lim, 2008, p. 20). for the full article: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1478929917706844 5 Figure (PREVIEW) Figure 1. Average Flesch-Kincaid grade levels of all analyzed candidates. for the full article: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1478929917706844 6 Figure 3. Average words per sentence for each candidate. for the full article: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1478929917706844 7 Figure 4. Average percentage of complex words (polysyllables) of each candidate. for the full article: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1478929917706844 8